240 times. It took me two minutes to finish the “minigame” last time I did it. That’s 8 hours of grinding to max out every skill. Not 8 hours of fun gameplay and visually interesting dragon fights and dungeon crawls, 8 hours (that’s eight hours) of flying from one shiny spot to the next. Eight. 8. Hours. Of slow-ass zero G floating.
Last time I booted the game up, I fast traveled to my ship, took off, and heard Sarah say she has something for me. Something about that same line played for the millionth time absolutely killed my motivation to play, and I haven’t started the game up in like a week. The romance system is too much too fast. I went from “flirting” with Sarah to married in like 4 hours. We’ve known each other for all of one in-game month. Maybe I’m just a broken person, but the way we talk sounds so disingenuously infatuated.
I think about the concept of playing, and it sounds fun in theory, but realistically what am I gonna get done in the next 8 hours? I’ll talk to people that I don’t care about to move through a story that I’m fundamentally disinterested in because I know that >!in order to max out the dragon shou–I mean, Starborn powers, I’ll need to jump through and abandon alternate universes like Rick Sanchez but not as an ironic critique of internet nihilism. Hours and hours and hours wasted on >!timelines I don’t care about just to get to the end game where I… have strong powers and a good ship, and can’t connect with any of the characters because they’ll be the tenth iteration of the same ones that I could never convince myself to care about before.!<
Maybe in a year or two after the game has been updated, I’ll check it out again. Maybe I can shut my brain off for a minute and pretend I’m not >!grinding through universes!< if it doesn’t take me eight hours to max out all the powers. Or maybe I’ll just play BG3 when it comes to Xbox and forget that Starfield ever existed in the first place
I really don’t understand how they green lit that design choice.
It was like Ubisoft towers on crack.
“Let’s take the least interesting gameplay mechanic possible, and then gate one of the only interesting mechanics behind it. And then let’s also make it take a few minutes of jetpacking around a barren planet to get there beforehand, to really jazz it up.”
Todd: “Yes, exactly! See that temple over there? Your can go there. And go there. And go there again. And again. And again. And again. Again. Again. Again.”
Devs look at each other…
“Is Toddbot broken or is this good gameplay design? Kenny, are you writing this shit down?”
I can believe that one of them played the little temple minigame once and thought it was cool, but unless they’re literal space aliens, I cannot imagine the thought of doing that for eight hours even crossed their mind.
The fact BG3 came out just before Starfield made me dislike the game even more than I probably would have I think. I went from playing probably the best RPG ever to Starfield, which doesn’t even try to make you think you’re playing any role except the chosen one. The fact that you join Constellation and almost instantly become not just a full member, but the person who everyone else takes orders from is rediculous.
The story sucks, the gameplay is bland, and there are so many friction points that constantly make you think about the fact you’re playing a game. It’s honestly sad. I love sci-fi so I was reasonably excited for the game, even knowing it’d be a modern Bethesda game, and it still let me down. The sci-fi concepts in the game aren’t even done well.
The feeling I got playing BG3 or even skyrim was one of “I can’t wait to try this again with X group/build/decision”. With starfield I don’t know if I’ll ever even get to the point of fucking off on a random adventure, let alone finish the story.
Part of my problem with Starfield is that the builds are basically pointless. Your background only gives you perk points in a few skills, and the only background worth using is Bounty Hunter since those three skills are absolute necessities for playing the game. Your traits matter more, but you can get absolute duds. I thought I had some strong role playing potential with a Freestar Enlightened whose parents are still alive… but those traits suck and don’t work together in the slightest. As an Enlightened Atheist, I have access to a chest with some hot garbage in a location on Jemeson that I had no reason to visit until past level 30. As a Freestar, I have some “unique” dialogue options that boil down to “I’m also from Akila! There are Ashtas!” My parents were really cool to have around… until I found out that giving me an ass garbage ship is the last thing they ever do. They’re also UC, so I have no idea how my character is from Akila. My grandma was a UC marine in the war, and I’m wearing her Freestar-killing duds now. I couldn’t even invite them to my wedding. My wife’s big character quest has to do with her Freestar-killing ship crashing on a planet, and I don’t recall there even being a dialogue option about those being my people she was killing back then.
Why are my parents UC if I’m Freestar? Why can’t I invite them to my wedding? Why aren’t they enlightened? Surely Bethesda could have spent some of the last decade making 16 sets of parents to account for the 4x4 possible combinations of religion and background. Nah, they spent all that time making an absolute assload of crewmates you can and never will hire.
It really does show that Bethesda are running about 10 years behind everyone else.
It cost them twice as much to make as BG3 did. How? Just compare any BG3 character and how animated they are thanks to full motion capture, to the same Bethesda animatronics they’ve used since forever.
It is not unfortunate, it is a strategic win by Larian. BG3 was actually supposed to come very late, but Larian released it early after learning about Starfield’s release date.
The fact that you join Constellation and almost instantly become not just a full member, but the person who everyone else takes orders from is rediculous.
Uhh have you played any other Bethesda title. If anything, the most common seniment is that game starts off very slow because its reletively speaking, the least ridiculous start conpared to most of the 3d bethesda games.
The opening sequence is slow, but no other game do you become essentially the faction leader so quickly. I guess maybe the blades in Skyrim, except you aren’t really the leader, just the person it’s supposed to protect, it’s one person, and it’s much further into the game.
Sure. That doesn’t explain why I can tell constellation members to go work for me in my outpost. Them being companions is fine. Then being crew mates is alright (though don’t they have other things they need to do?). Them being sweatshop workers is dumb. You’re not technically the leader, but you are more than anyone else is. Sarah is in name only, but she takes orders from you. Everything that happens revolves around you, despite the other Starborn seeming to have had their own agency in other loops. Maybe we’re only successful this loop because they decided to stop doing anything on their own?
After Fallout 4 I kind of figured this is the direction starfield was going. I love Skyrim, but I just haven’t been able to enjoy a Bethesda game since then. They don’t have the magic, and the mechanics are even more half assed than Skyrim.
Idk, this shit just isn’t acceptable after Witcher 3 came out.
Why do people worship game studios? Successful game studios always get big, go corporate, and then the talent and creativity leaves.
Witcher was good because it wasn’t made by Bioware, Mythic, Bethesda, or any of these brand name studios. CD Project Red will come to suck one day, too. As is the cycle of game studios.
american capitalism turns anything good into shit.
have a good game? let EA ruin it.
wait until you find out how shit coca cola is. go use corn to make sugar. die young or subscription pay for health until you die fat and unhappy.
…there is really nothing left to like about the american dream.
2024 will be eyeopening. what is it if you want two old fucks fight for presidency? necrophelia? EA will ruin ten more game studios, netflix/amazon will show ads ads ads in every subscribtion and house costs will make sleeping under a bridge a 5 star airbnb experience…
starfield ia just one result of a fucked up culture
don’t make this an american thing, ain’t like the chinese aren’t making knock off bullshit all the time, or the saudis aren’t buying up everything they can.
The fuck I just read? You seem upset, but I’m honestly not sure if it’s about high fructose corn syrup, netflix, airbnb, necrophilia or possibly necrophilia involving the president…
You need to put down the keyboard, stop using whatever stimulant you’re on and take a long nap. Then you come back here and reread that diatribe and, for the love of all that’s good in the world, please try to translate it into coherent English.
At first, I thought the quality seemed “meh” because it was released so close after the masterpiece that was Baldur’s Gate 3. Everyone had high expectations and that’s a hard game to follow, I believed.
After removing myself from Baldur’s Gate 3, I discovered that I was wrong. Starfield still a “meh” game when taken on its own.
marketing is easy. shillbots are cheap and more effective than ever now that GPT is a thing, and then there is “50 cent army” or mechanical turk options if you want a more human option
this guy is acting like you cant just tell constellation to fuck off and never return there and go back to being a miner 😂 albeit freelance miner on your own but still
This is so polarizing. I had no doubts it would be shit, it’s Bethesda. But it’s actually not that bad. But some just say the exact opposite. The game mechanics are all completely schizophrenic at best, but it’s not a surprise, at any point does it deviate from classic Bethesda logic. Staring dudes and badly scaled rpg systems. It’s just par for course but more modern. And why people think quick travel is a bad thing, when it’s been a staple since like 97 or something, is just completely beyond me.
Lets start from your statement - it is shit. And people paid 70$ for it. No need to go further. Their voices deserve to be heard (since, you know, 70$). And now you say that they shouldn’t have believed the hype as if they are wrong and not the people that overpromised and (not underdelivered but) lied.
This is my approach as well. I now always wait, sometimes years, before buying a game because I’ve been burned too many time buying day 1 releases or, even more horrifyingly, pre orders. My track record? Well, I preordered FO76 because I loved FO4 and foolishly expected a similar experience. $60 and 1 hour of game play later, I put it down and never touched it again. Also preordered CP2077… huge mistake. I didn’t have a cutting edge computer but it was no slouch… ran like shit. Only played it a year after release. Also and worst of all, I preordered No Man’s Sky. Like, what the fuck was that about? Loved it 2 years later tho. After CP2077, I vowed to never ever buy a game less than a year old. It’s stupid to support shit bullshit behavior from these so called “AAA” companies. I had that term “AAA” anyways. It’s just marketing speak for, more expensive than what it should ever be.
space shouts ? I’ve played about 25hrs (it’s become very, very repetitive in the last 5) but I don’t know what this is about. Is it a new mechanic that reveals itself at some point during the game ?
Can we really be honest with ourselves for a second. It’s not the greatest game ever and it’s not the worst game ever. It can just be a game that some people like and others don’t.
I personally like it, but I can %100 see why others might not. It doesn’t need to be deeper than that really.
I think people are more upset that game reviewers lauded a meh product — checks and balances sort of thing. Like we’re at the point that Skillup claims his hour long review of Cyberpunk was actually really nuanced because he mentioned some caveats. I mean Paul Tassi said Starfield was his 2023 game of the year, lol. I honestly believe they can’t even see the bias of how going all in on a big AAA release is good for them.
I was turned off from the moment i saw at least most romance characters look 40-50 years old. Who the f wants those kinds of storylines with someone old enough to be their mom?
I’m like 90% certain they planned on a method to travel between systems without jumping or fast traveling.
He3 was supposed to be collected for jumping. However, if you run out near a planet that doesn’t have any, it would be very difficult to get anywhere. It would also mean one of the very first things any user would have to do is set up an outpost for he3 or buy a lot of it from vendors.
If there was a way to travel between planets and systems, even if it took a few minutes, new users could at least play around wherever they are and eventually set up an outpost to speed up the process. Maybe it would only be reasonable for planet-to-planet within the same system, but you would be able to find he3 somehow.
Also, the whole thing with jumping to a new system. If your travel path includes another system that you haven’t visited yet, you have to stop there first. It doesn’t make much sense from a gameplay perspective unless they planned on having users actually travel it.
DLC adds the Elder Scrolls planet. You travel there to pick up some lost artifact part and have to fight your way through dragons and vampires and shit. It’s so easy that you decide to build an outpost and retire there.
Elder Scrolls 6 starts off with an alien invader (Starfield you) stealing some ancient power which keeps evil at bay or whatever. You gain allies from the factions if you want and perform a heist from the evil alien thing. Fuck you, buy the game.
Like you’re guarding one of the last untouched Elder Scrolls. An alarm goes off “some is breaking into the vault”. You and your squad are the first to arrive just to see some oddly shaped humanoid flip you the bird as the weirdly foggy drawbridge closes.
The water, like, moved. They tried to make it look like real water. And for it’s time I was blown away. Not to mention the giant bugs you could ride around on. The fucking god just kind of hovering there in the main city, the mushrooms. The fact that you could GROW YOUR OWN MISHROOM TO LIVE IN And the cliff racers. Oh my God the cliff racers. All the cliff racers you could ever want. Everywhere. Just asking to be punched in their faces. Every game before and since really needs to look at morrowind and take bite, because if I’m not getting pecked in the face at least every 30 seconds I’m playing by a cliff racers then YOUR GAME IS DHIT. FIX IT.
There’s also just SO MANY random and interesting encounters that you could entirely miss. There’s the person who lost a ring in a pond, but when you jump down to get it, they assault you. There’s the Nord that has been stripped naked and frozen in place by a witch. There’s the boots of blinding speed (I loved throwing these on and using the mini-map to navigate the roads).
I also loved the way you had to utilize multiple forms of fast travel to get around. “Okay, if I take the silt strider to Balmora, there’s a Mage’s Guild that will take me to-”. It was a fun world to live in.
And the factions forced you to choose between them. You couldn’t do it all with one character, because that wouldn’t make sense!
Maybe I’ll go get OpenMW and play for a bit again…
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